The Truth

by Peter James

  ‘We got the contract!’ Gareth told John. ‘I mean, this is unreal, right? We’ve bid on ten jobs in the past month, and we’ve got nine of them. And we could have got the tenth if we’d wanted but we effectively turned it down. What’s going on?’

  John sat in the pub, sipping his beer and smoking the cigarette he’d bummed from Gareth. He’d bummed so many from his partner in the past few weeks that he kept buying new packs for him. But that was better than buying a pack for himself. As long as he was just bumming, it didn’t feel as if he had started smoking again.

  He wondered if Susan had noticed the smell of smoke on him; she must have done, he thought. In fact, thinking about it, the other evening she had told him that she didn’t mind the smell of coffee any more, that it had stopped smelling like burning rubber, although it still tasted metallic; and she had said that she didn’t mind the smell of cigarettes any more, either.

  Had that been a barbed hint? If it had, why hadn’t she just said something? That was the problem, they weren’t communicating: they were like two strangers living under one roof. He knew that it was as much his fault as Susan’s. Probably more. And he knew the reason.

  ‘How do you mean, what’s going on, Gareth?’

  Gareth, in a red cotton jacket and baggy green shirt, gave him a weirding-out look. ‘You have to admit this is spooky, right?’

  John drew on his cigarette in silence. It was spooky.

  ‘I mean, these new backers of ours, they must be impressed, right?’

  Six o’clock, the pub was filling up. Someone was playing a slot machine, and kept reaching a level that set off a twangy musical tune that John found irritating. And Gareth was irritating too. And the fact that he’d been weak and had started smoking again.

  But the real issue was Susan, his marriage, their life. What life? They didn’t have a life any more. She was eight weeks pregnant. Just a couple more weeks and she would be out of danger of miscarrying, and the way he was feeling right now, he wanted to go home and throw the bitch downstairs and make that miscarriage happen.

  He crushed out his cigarette. Gareth was talking and he wasn’t listening. DigiTrak was going so incredibly that he didn’t need Mr Sarotzini’s money any more. Christ, if Clake had just let them hang on for another month they wouldn’t have needed Sarotzini and the Vörn Bank in the first place. There were two things he wanted to happen. He wanted Susan to miscarry and he wanted to get Mr Sarotzini out of his face.

  Except Mr Sarotzini wasn’t around and he hadn’t responded to either of the reports John had sent to the Vörn Bank. John had asked Tony Weir to find a loophole in the agreement they had made. Weir had responded that there was no problem in finding a loophole – it was illegal under British law to have a surrogate child for money. The problem would be with Mr Sarotzini, who held legal ownership of DigiTrak and the house until the baby was handed over. The deeds, shares, everything were assigned to him.

  Before Susan’s pregnancy had been confirmed they had talked about inducing a miscarriage. It had been Susan who had made the suggestion. But she had changed. She’d become sanctimonious about the baby and absurdly protective. Every time he tried to bring up the subject of miscarriage, she changed the conversation abruptly, or walked away.

  He finished his second pint, and ordered a third. While Gareth talked enthusiastically about a new RAID server he wanted to order, and compression algorithms, John drank his beer, getting more and more angry with Susan. He finished it, told Gareth he’d see him in the morning and headed for the door.

  He was going home. He was going to grab that bitch wife of his by the throat.

  He was going to make her miscarry.

  ‘“He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all,”’ Mr Sarotzini said to Kündz.

  And Kündz, sitting in Mr Sarotzini’s great office in Geneva, replied, ‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge.’

  And this pleased Mr Sarotzini. And then he read the list that Kündz had prepared for him. ‘Archie Warren? Fergus Donleavy? Tony Weir? Just these three? Why is John Carter’s name not on this danger list also?’

  Kündz had to think. ‘Because,’ he started, and then he stopped. ‘Because that decision has been made,’ he said, and he knew, immediately, that this was the wrong answer.

  And this answer did not please Mr Sarotzini, Kündz could see that in his expression, and suddenly he was afraid. He could smell his own fear rising from his body. He could smell the leather in this room, the polish that had been applied to the wood, the chemical that had cleaned the carpet, but he could not smell Mr Sarotzini.

  And this was a strange thing that had Kündz found about Mr Sarotzini: he never, ever had any smell and Kündz found this hard. He was certain it was a game Mr Sarotzini played with him, deliberately blocking his ability to smell him by putting something disabling into his mind.

  Kündz had never come across a person before who had no smell. Without smell, Kündz could not read Mr Sarotzini. He was the only person Kündz had ever met whom he could not read.

  Mr Sarotzini could read every cell in Kündz’s body, and he could hear them. They were all speaking to him now. They were deeply afraid.

  ‘Stefan, who made this decision?’

  Kündz sensed the temperature in his body changing: for an instant it rose, then it plunged, dropping away so fast that all his hairs stiffened, turning hard as needles.

  ‘I believed we had no other option,’ Kündz said.

  Mr Sarotzini, behind his desk, in his fine suit, barely moved. ‘John Carter, is he special to you, Stefan?’ Now he leaned forward a little. ‘Tell me, Stefan, would it cause you pain to hurt Mr Carter?’

  Kündz was careful. He wasn’t sure of the answer Mr Sarotzini was expecting, he was trying to remember what Mr Sarotzini had taught him. It was one of the Truths, the Third, or was it the Fourth? He couldn’t remember, not exactly, and he did not want the pain Mr Sarotzini would inflict if he got it wrong.

  ‘The Fourth Truth, Stefan? “The only true pain is to hurt the thing you love”?’

  Kündz answered, ‘No, it would not cause me pain to hurt John Carter.’ And secretly he was thinking that he would love to hurt John Carter, more than anything in the world, but he was careful to smother this thought. Mr Sarotzini could take thoughts straight from his head and read them.

  And Mr Sarotzini was standing up now, walking across his office to a cabinet. Kündz knew what was inside the cabinet and he did not want this.

  Mr Sarotzini swung open the teak door to reveal a large television screen. He touched a button and the screen came alive. Kündz braced himself, using all the training Mr Sarotzini had given him to control his emotions, but this was still difficult.

  The picture on the screen was of Claudie. She was sitting, naked, in a big wicker chair in Kündz’s apartment in Zürich, and she was doing what Kündz had always loved her to do, which was to press her hand up between her legs while he was intoxicating himself on the smells of her body.

  Claudie was smiling that big, sexy, provocative come-and-take-me smile. She was playful and she was pretty – but in a different way from Susan Carter. Susan had fresh, healthy, all-American outdoor looks, but Claudie was an indoor girl. Her glossy black hair was razor cut in Goth style, and her flesh was as white as death. But it was soft flesh to touch: she was slim enough to be vulnerable, but carried just a hint of voluptuousness.

  Being pregnant would make Susan Carter voluptuous, he thought suddenly.

  Claudie was moving that hand so slowly, gentle strokes with those long fingers, and sometimes she brought them out from inside her and sucked them, and caressed her body with them. But there was no soundtrack playing with this recording.

  The sound that was coming into this room now, through the speakers on either side of the television, was live and, Kündz knew, it was coming from within this building.

  The sound was Claudie sc
reaming.

  And the sound of her screaming was almost beyond imagination. The agony, the fear, the terror, the despair, the pleading it carried.

  And Kündz was aware that Mr Sarotzini was watching him and he must pass this test. And this was hard, because he knew exactly what they were doing to Claudie and the thought of it churned even him up.

  Claudie screamed again, and this was even worse, and then she cried out, ‘No, please, oh, God, nooooooooooooo.’

  Her voice turned to a shriek so fearful that Kündz wanted to put his fingers into his ears and turn away. But he couldn’t.

  He daren’t.

  Then Mr Sarotzini turned off the television and the speakers, and closed the cabinet door. He returned to his desk and asked Kündz, ‘Do you love Susan Carter enough to feel pain if you hurt her?’

  For the first time in her life, Susan felt she was doing something for herself, and not for someone else. She was doing it because she wanted to do it, and it was elating.

  Standing on top of the step-ladder in the freshly painted front spare bedroom that overlooked the street, with two picture nails gripped in her lips and a hammer in her hand, she felt deeply happy and content. Maybe it was the hormone change in her body, or just the excitement she had felt this afternoon when Miles Van Rhoe had put the ultrasound scanner on her abdomen and let her listen to her baby’s heartbeat.

  If John would just calm down about this whole thing, everything would be perfect. It wasn’t a big deal having this baby, it really wasn’t, and she was doing it for them both, for their marriage, for everything. And even though this wasn’t their child, it was a human being, it had as much right to her love and care as if it were their child. She owed it that much and she was determined to give it that much. And it was an adventure. And, most important of all, in a little more than seven months it would be over. It was just a matter of getting John to see it that way.

  And she would. She had experienced his stubbornness before: it was like a defence mechanism for him, a toughness he had developed to shield him from the horrors of his wretched childhood. Confrontation never worked so she just had to be patient, take it a day at a time, be nice to him, swallow the insults, slowly win him round.

  She hammered one nail into the wall, fixing the picture hook on the pencilled cross she had marked, and at that moment the door crashed open behind her. As she turned round in shock, the remaining nail she had been holding in her mouth pinged onto the bare floorboards.

  John was standing in the doorway. His expression frightened her. She could smell the waft of alcohol and cigarette smoke and he seemed to be having difficulty in holding himself steady and focusing. He must have driven home in this state, she thought with horror. This wasn’t the John Carter she married, this wasn’t her rock, she didn’t know this man.

  ‘Hi, hon,’ she said, nervously, because almost anything she said these days seemed to make him fly off the handle.

  He just kept staring at her, and the way he was looking at her unnerved her. There seemed – and she hoped she was imagining it – to be pure hatred in his face.

  John was staring at a bitch stranger in his house. He was thinking that if he pushed this ladder over, right now, she’d fall to the ground, which might make her miscarry. It would be easy, he thought. She was balanced precariously on the top step, hammer in her hand, picture hook hanging lopsided from only one nail on the wall. He could walk over there, blunder into the ladder, she wouldn’t realise it had been deliberate.

  But what if she broke her arm instead? Or her neck?

  And then as she turned her head, instead of a stranger, John saw his wife standing at the top of that step-ladder, he saw Susan, and she looked so radiantly happy. She was in this home that she loved, and she was doing what she liked to do, decorating, making this place into the dream they both had.

  He took a deep breath, swallowed down the hatred that had been growing inside him these past weeks, remembered.

  It’s only for seven months, for Chrissake.

  And then it will be over.

  Nine months, it was nothing, it was already eight weeks now, just seven months to go, they could handle this, they could keep the lid on this cauldron of emotions, fuck Sarotzini, fuck everybody.

  ‘How was your day?’ he asked.

  ‘I went to Miles Van Rhoe – another scan.’ Uncertain about his mood, she decided not to tell him that she had listened to the baby’s heartbeat. ‘I came home afterwards to work on Fergus’s manuscript. Thought I’d get a few pictures up in here – thought I’d put up that one of the Suffolk harbour – the one you’ve never been crazy about. It would look OK in here, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sure. Do I get a kiss?’

  Sensing his lightening mood, she blew him a teasing one. ‘Pass me that nail I just dropped, then I’ll give you a great big one!’

  John knelt, found the nail and she hammered it in. Then he passed her up the picture, a rather uninspired sunset behind a fishing port, which they’d bought some years back in a car-boot sale.

  ‘Fancy a movie? There’s several things on I want to see.’

  ‘If you like.’ She didn’t sound enthusiastic.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s just that it’s such a gorgeous evening and there won’t be many more this year when it’s warm enough to sit out. Why don’t we have a barbecue? We haven’t for weeks.’

  John thought about it and she was right. It was the third week of September; the summer had slipped past. ‘Weather’s been shitty,’ he said. ‘That’s why we haven’t.’

  But they both knew it had been a glorious few weeks, just the last couple of days it had rained, that was all. It was something else that had been shitty.

  Susan hung the picture, straightened it, and John steadied the ladder as she came down, then put his arms around her and held her. She nestled into him, pressed her face to his shoulder, their cheeks touching. John smelled her hair, the sweet coconut scent of her shampoo which he liked.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  The alcohol and the smoke gave him a manly smell. When they had first gone out, he always smelled of smoke and she’d liked that because it reminded her of her father, who had smoked throughout her childhood. ‘And I love you,’ she replied. ‘More than anything in the world.’

  Instead of having a barbecue, they went to bed and made love. A few hours later, John woke up and heard the flick of a sheet of paper as Susan read her way through further pages of Fergus Donleavy’s rewrite, and he had a close-up view of her left breast. He realised that her breasts had become bigger recently, and that was a turn-on.

  He gently traced the contour with his finger, stopping to give the nipple a circular stroke, and Susan wriggled, giving a tiny murmur of pleasure.

  ‘Hungry?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh-huh. What do you fancy?’

  ‘I don’t mind, something light. Scrambled eggs?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll make it.’ John kissed her and got out of bed.

  ‘God, you’ve got a hard-on again!’ she said.

  He grinned. ‘Yup, well that’s a problem I’ve always had with you.’ Then he pulled a towel around his waist and padded downstairs to the kitchen.

  Tonight at any rate, he thought, they had their life back.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Ten weeks. And now it had been pointed out to her, there was no mistaking it. Even on this fuzzy grey and white screen Susan could see it clearly. She could see the arms, the legs, she could even, when Van Rhoe indicated, make out a foot.

  This is incredible, she thought, this baby, alive, inside me.

  A leg moved, then the other, and she wanted to keep on watching, but Van Rhoe removed the probe and she was left with a whiteout on the screen.

  The obstetrician looked down at her and smiled. ‘I can confirm viability, Susan. Everything looks normal, the baby is healthy, and the results of the mucal thickness scan are fine, we have no worry about Down’s syndrome. And your worst danger period for misc
arriage is now past.’

  ‘Were you worried before about Down’s Syndrome?’ she asked, suspicious of his concern.

  He reassured her silkily. ‘No, but it was too soon to carry out the examination then. This Down’s syndrome test is routine, Susan, and you’re well below the risk age.’

  She knew a little about Down’s syndrome: older parents had a higher risk of producing a baby with it, and she wondered if that meant just the mother or included the father. Suddenly she shuddered, and Van Rhoe looked at her, concerned.

  ‘Are you all right, Susan?’

  She nodded. It had been a sudden feeling of revulsion that it was Mr Sarotzini’s baby and not John’s that she had been looking at; that a part of Mr Sarotzini was growing inside her. It was a feeling that kept returning. Everything would be fine for a few days, and then this sudden horror came back that she was carrying another man’s child.

  But it’s not just Mr Sarotzini’s baby, this is my baby also, she reminded herself, reassured herself.

  And now she was at the point-of-no-return. Her body had not rejected the baby and now it was only her mind that could. Abortion was still an option, but not one she was even remotely considering. The image of the screen replayed in her mind. Those legs, the way they moved. That was – just so – incredible.

  ‘Could I listen to the heartbeat again?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course, Susan.’ He placed the scanner on her abdomen, moving it around until it picked up the sound, and Susan lay still for some moments, entranced by the steady boof-boof-boof.

  Then Miles Van Rhoe gently lifted her legs from the stirrups and handed her a paper towel. As she stood up she felt a power that she had never felt before. Even the frosty nurse was smiling.

  ‘Is it a boy or girl?’ she asked, and immediately noticed the briefest glance between Van Rhoe and his nurse – or had she imagined it? Did they know something?

  ‘Sixteen weeks is the earliest we can tell,’ the obstetrician said. ‘Are you sure you would like to know the sex in advance, Susan? Most mothers don’t want to.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, fretting about the glance between them that she had seen. What did it mean?